Tag: Christmas books

books

Recommendsday: New Festive Reads 2023

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After last week’s not-new Christmas books, today I bring you some of the new festive books I’ve read so far this year in case you’re in the market for some last minute purchasing and reading before the big day. Because some of you may be more prepared for Christmas than I currently am!

A Holly Jolly Ever After by Sierra Simone and Julie Murphy

This is the sequel to last year’s A Merry Little Meet Cute and is also set in Christmas Notch, Vermont (Hello ticking another state off my 50 States Challenge for the year!). This time our heroine is Winnie Baker a former child actress who managed to keep her career going into adulthood by maintaining her wholesome Christian image. Except now her perfect life has come falling down and now she’s going to reinvent herself in a steamy holiday movie. Her co-star is Kallum, former boyband star and now owner of a regional pizza chain who went viral after a sex tape leaked (and who you may remember from that first book) and who has some history with Winnie that means that it’s all a bit awkward. But when Winnie has trouble faking pleasure on screen she asks Kallum for help with research and you all know where this is going. Sex lessons for reasons is always a fun trope – and obviously it’s extremely not closed door. The premise is bonkers, but it was an entertaining read even if purity culture makes me really angry.

The Christmas Book Club by Sarah Morgan

This is this year’s Christmas Sarah Morgan, and I’m probably cheating by mentioning her again so soon after reminding you about the Snow Crystal series, but this is women’s fiction and those are straight up romances so I’m just going to go with it. This follows four women – three friends approaching their fortieth birthdays and taking a Christmas trip to a quaint inn in Vermont and the inn’s owner, a young widow with a little girl whose husband died while they were renovating the hotel together. Each woman is facing some sort of challenge in her life and the week at the inn will help them figure out what to do next. I think I would have liked less main characters and more focus on each storyline but then I’m often a bit like that and I don’t know which woman I would be happy to lose! This is quite low stress and very festive and perfect for a winter afternoon once you’ve got your presents wrapped!

The Christmas Jigsaw Murders by Alexandra Benedict*

Early in December, crossword setter and grouch Edie receives a parcel in the post containing jigsaw pieces showing a crime scene and a note saying unless she solves the puzzle at least four people will die. Of course she starts investigating with the help of her nephew who is a police detective – until he starts to worry that she’s in danger and tries to shut her out of the investigation. But of course that’s not going to stop her. This is a murder mystery with some hidden clues in there that tie in for puzzlers, *but* don’t be deceived by the festive cover and colour scheme, it’s actually pretty dark. I was expecting/hoping for something Christmassy but with Thursday Murder club levels of grimness or something cozy crime adjacent, but if it wasn’t Christmas it would be a murder mystery with a dark and brooding cover, rather than an arty one. So not really a for me book, but I think it will appeal to a lot of people who like their crime a bit grimmer.

And that’s your lot today – I’ve got a couple more Christmas books I’m going to try and read this December, but who knows if that will actually happen, because I keep getting distracted away to other books!

Happy Reading!

books, Recommendsday

Recommendsday: Not New Festive Books

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It’s starting to feel proper Christmassy now, so it’s time for the festive reading recommendations. And I’ve broken it down into two again this year – the new releases for Christmas 2023 and books from previous years that I’ve read this year.

So lets start with Jeevanki Charika’s Picture Perfect, which has a heroine who needs to find her inspiration as a photographer again after a bad break up and a hero who needs someone to take on a group holiday to make his ex jealous and try to win her back. This is a fun and festive (New Year not Christmas!) fake relationship romance that sees the two characters become better versions of themselves as they pretend to be in a relationship. I found Vimal’s perspective to be quite stressful to read because of his issues with reading social cues (I was going to say social anxiety but I’m not quite sure that is quite what it is) but I really liked Niro as a character and I loved her passion for photography and the way that pretending to be Vimal’s girlfriend gave her the confidence to stand up for him and to come out of her shell. You might remember that Charika’s previous book Playing for Love was a BotW in 2022 and this has characters in common with that.

I did a series post about Susan Mallery’s Happily Inc series a couple of weeks back, and Home Sweet Christmas this is a twin storyline Christmas romance set in another one of Mallery’s quirky small towns – this time Wishing Tree, the Christmas themed-town which is frankly bonkers, but still seems to work some how. One storyline has Camryn, who has moved back to the town that she grew up after the death of her mum and is newly responsible for her younger half sisters and the family’s gift wrapping business (just go with it). She’s trying to work out what her life and future looks like now and whether she wants to risk a relationship again. She starts a definitely temporary relationship with Jake, whose family own the local resort. The other has River, new to town and trying to find her place and put down some roots. Her friends persuade her to put her name in the hat for the town’s Snow Queen – and soon she’s doing events with Dylan, a hot local carpenter. Some of this really worked for me, but Jake’s mom crossed the boundary from strangely well informed and well placed and into manipulative and meddling and it really messed with my enjoyment of the rest of the book. I think there was probably too much plot on each story for them to both go into one book, but it was still a fun, easy Christmas read.

And finally let’s go for some classic crime, with another British Library Crime Classic holiday collection – this time A Surprise for Christmas. It’s got G K Chesterton, Ngaio Marsh and Margery Allingham along with several other names you might recognise from other BLCC books. I’m not usually a big short story reader, but at Christmas I do quite like them, and it’s a nice way to find new authors to watch out for in the BLCC collection – I think that’s how I found Christiana Brand, but I wouldn’t swear to that.

Anyway, that’s your lot, happy festive reading!

Christmas books

Series at Christmas…

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So for this Friday post, as it’s the last week day before Christmas, we’re festive again but it’s not a series, but some Christmas instalments of series.

Firstly, a couple of the classic series have Christmas instalments. Poirot has Hercule Poirot’s Christmas and The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding but Miss Marple only has a short story. There’s a Christmas story collection in the Maigret series too.

In series I have talked about, Jodi Taylor does a Chronicles of St Mary’s Christmas story every year that comes out on the 25th. I try and make sure I read them in the right order with the novels, but I think you can get away with winning these out of order. There’s a Christmas Pink Carnation short too – but that’s definitely only one if you’ve read the series! Susan Mallery has full-length and novella fill in stories in her Fools Gold series that are Christmassy and there’s also a Christmas novel in her Happily, Inc series as well as the fact that her new series has a Christmas theme. There’s a Lady Hardcastle short story too Virago also pulled together Angela Thirkell’s Christmas short stories together into Christmas at High Rising if you want some gentle humour from her world this Christmas.

I mentioned Jenny Colgan in the Kindle offer post, but a lot of her series have actual full length Christmas instalments – I really liked Christmas at Rosie Hopkins Sweetshop, but there are several to chose from. And as I said in my O’Neil brothers post, Sarah Morgan also has festive instalments in her Puffin Island and From Manhattan with Love series. There’s a Christmas Agatha Raisin novel from M C Beaton, and a Hamish MacBeth short story.

And finally, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that there are lots of Christmas books in the Meg Langslow series. As you will have noticed from the reading lists, I’m currently on a binge re-read through the series, and I’ve just started to get to the point where the Christmas-themed books start happening. The series is delightful generally – but the Christmas ones are in particular.

Happy Last Week Day before Christmas everyone.

Christmas books, new releases, Recommendsday, reviews

Recommendsday: New Christmas Books 2022

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It’s the final few days before Christmas, so here I am with a round up of some of the Christmassy romances that have come out this season.

There’s Something about Merry by Codi Hall*

This is a Christmas romance with a You’ve Got Mail-ish twist as the new foreman of a Christmas tree farm in Idaho falls for the boss’s daughter – except he doesn’t know that’s who he’s talking to. Merry’s spent the year working on herself and is ready for romance, but Clark definitely isn’t – he’s a single dad and he’s focussing on his son. The writing to each other stage of this was over faster than I expected, but the characters are nice, the setting is charming, and it’s got a very weird speciality knitted product to make you laugh. Fun.

Snowed in for Christmas by Sarah Morgan*

This is Sarah Morgan’s Christmas novel for this year – I’ve already mentioned that it’s a Kindle Deal this month, and obviously written about my love of her O’Neill brothers series. I don’t love this as much – it’s just got too many plot strands and a Very Definite Resolution for something that takes place over a couple of days, but the Snowy rural Scottish setting is delightful and I do love the way she creates her families. I could just have read a whole book each about two of the main plot strands so I wished there was more of each of them. I do think in years gone by she might have done this as a pair of novels set across the same period. But hey, the times they are a changing.

The Holiday Trap by Roan Parish*

Greta’s family don’t really understand how hard it is to be the only Lesbian in their tiny community in Maine. Truman’s had his heartbroken again and needs somewhere to escape to. A mutual friend organises a house swap between the two which sees Greta head to New Orleans, and Truman to Maine, where unexpected things happen to them both. Now, I should say that this didn’t work for me, because the characters rubbed me up the wrong way and the quirkiness levels were off the charts* BUT I know that it’s going to be someone else’s cup of tea because I’ve seen other people raving about this author. But if you want a swapping lives type romance – and some Jewish representation this Hanukkah week, you could do worse than try this.

And that’s your lot for today – but if you want some more Christmas recommendations- I have a lot of previous posts – so go check them out!

*I’ve had a lot of problems with Too Much Quirk recently. It’s getting tiring.

Christmas books, detective, Forgotten books, Recommendsday

Book of the Week: The White Priory Murders

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As you may have noticed yesterday, last week was very much a week of Meg Langslow. But I did also finish a murder mystery with Christmas in the subtitle: which is a perfect timing as everyone* starts to finish work for the holidays.

A glamorous Hollywood actress is back in London. Marcia Tate has returned to try and get her revenge on the theatre community who snubbed her before she was a star of the silver screen. But when she’s found dead in a pavilion in the grounds of the author of the play she’s due to star in, a murder investigation starts and Sir Henry Merrivale is called in to investigate. This is a variation on a locked room mystery, where snow plays a key role. There is a large cast of suspects but it seems impossible for any of them – or anyone – to have committed the crime. And yet someone did.

Every year the British Library adds another few seasonal mysteries to their Christmas collection, and this is one of this year’s additions but despite the subtitle, the snow is the only really festive element – I think A Winter Mystery would probably be a better description. Carter Dickson is one of John Dickson Carr’s other pen names, and like his other books all the clues are there for you to figure it out if you know where to look – and he’ll give you the page numbers to prove it! Dickson’s writing style is not my favourite of that group of crime writers, but it’s a clever enough impossible puzzle that I didn’t mind too much.

I got my copy via Kindle Unlimited, which means you won’t be able to get it on Kobo at the moment, but you could also buy it in paperback from the British Library bookshop – it’s too late for posting before Christmas, but you could pop in to the shop if you’re in London, and I’m sure it’ll be on the Christmas mystery table in the larger bookshops.

Happy Reading!

*everyone else – I’m still at work until Friday night, and it’s a really busy week.

Christmas books, series

Bingeable series: Holidays with the Wongs

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Continuing my festive-y seasonally appropriate sort of theme in a way, this week’s series is the Holidays with the Wongs novella collection by Jackie Lau.

This is a four novella collection based around holidays – starting with (Canadian) Thanksgiving, then Christmas, Chinese New Year and Valentines day. The premise is a set of siblings trying to avoid the matchmaking attempts of their parents, but finding love in the process. In trope terms we have only one bed in the Christmas story, where the hero and heroine get stuck in a snow storm, fake relationship, sort-of second chance and then no strings relationship turns real. I really enjoyed these – they’re funny as well as being romances and the Wong family are a hoot across the whole series. And as an added incentive, this series of novellas has just had the film rights bought – so you never know, you might be seeing them on a movie channel near you in the next few years

If you haven’t read any Jackie Lau before, they’re a really nice place to start. Lau writes really fun Canadian-set romances. And she has several other Christmas-set novellas too if you like them as well as full length novels. I recommended Donut Fall in Love in my late holiday reading post, but there are several of her books that I’ve really enjoyed over the last couple of years.

So you can buy these individually, but they’re also available as a bundle of all of them on Kindle and Kobo which is actually the best value way of doing it.

Have a great weekend everyone!

series

Wintry Series: Trisha Ashley’s Lancashire books

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So this is actually two separate series and one standalone. Or at least it is the way I’m counting them. But they are (in the main) really quite Christmassy and often Wintery too so they’re perfect for this time of year. And as we’re in the middle of a cold snap here at the moment, books for curling up in front of the fire with are great.

I’ve grouped them together because they are all set in little villages in Lancashire where you see some of the previous characters pop back up in later books – and two thirds of them centre around Christmas. I’ve written about Trisha Ashley before, but thear are probably my favourite of hers – as I said at the top, they’re warm hugs of books, perfect for cozy afternoons on the sofa under a blanket. They’re all romances – but the British kind, where there is a bigger plot going on that ends up in a romantic happy ending, rather than the more American one type – where any other plot is a side order to the romance. I hope that makes sense, I’ve only just come up with that sort of definition. And only now because I hate using the term Woman’s fiction so much.

Anyway, in the Sticklepond sequence is A Winters Tale is wintery but does have Christmas in it and is about Sophy, who goes back to her big historic family home for the first time after she inherits it. There’s a charming but dubious cousin and a strong and silent gardener as well as some eccentric older ladies and a possible ghost. Chocolate Wishes is not a Christmas novel, but has a chocolate maker and an ex-rock star in a second chance romance. Chocolate Shoes… is a shoe shop owner with a very annoying fiancé, who gets a mysterious next door neighbour. And the. We’re back to Christmas with a single mum with a poorly child and a handsome baker.

Then Twelve Days of Christmas and A Christmas Cracker are both set in Little Mumming – the first has a house sitter running into the home owner who is trying to avoid the village festivities, the second has a cracker factory and a woman who is trying to recover after she was framed for a crime she didn’t commit. And finally The Magic of Christmas has another cute Lancashire village with some unique festive traditions and the heroine is unexpectedly single with several men vying for her attention.

And to be honest if you can’t find something there to tempt you, I wash my hands of you. They’re all fairly easily available in ebook although as they’re fairly old now (A Winters Tale is the oldest and came out in 2008) I don’t know how easy they’ll be to find in the shops.

Have a great weekend everyone!

series

Wintry series: O’Neil Brothers

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We’re moving towards Christmas and so I thought I would start a seasonal series strand to help with your festive reading needs! And I’m starting with an old favourite author – Sarah Morgan and her O’Neil Brothers series, which is are nearly a decade old now – which is frankly quite scary.

And I’m going to say at the outset, that only two of the three books in this series are set at Christmas – but that’s two thirds so it still counts. This series is set in the Snow Crystal ski resort in Vermont. Our three heros are the O’Neil brothers – whose family run the resort. In the first book in the series. Sleigh Bells in the Snow, Kayla would rather ignore Christmas than celebrate, but she heads to Snow Crystal to try and win the marketing business of the resort’s owner Jackson. Suddenly Last Summer is about Elise, a chef in the town and the runway brother Sean, who is a surgeon who had a one night stand a few years back and are busy ignoring it. And the third book in the series is Maybe this Christmas where ex-ski racer and single dad Tyler ends up with his friend Breanna (who is secretly in love with him) staying in his chalet because the resort is overbooked. So that’s a career girl finding love while turning aroudn the fortunes of a ski resort, a second chance romance and a single dad romance. If you don’t want to read the whoel series – and why wouldn’t you because you’ll then get to see the previous couples pop back up again – you can pick your trope and start there!

Sarah Morgan has a long list of Christmas books now, so it took a bit of thinking to pick one to feature here – but I went for the O’Neil brothers, because the snowy setting makes it feel extra Christmassy. But if you want more Sarah Morgan Christmas, there is a Christmas book in her Puffin Island and From Manhattan with Love series as well as various standalone novels.

You should be able to get hold of these fairly easily in ebook, but I don’t know how likely you are to find paperbacks nearly decade on. But to get yo sgtarted here is the Kindle link to Sleighbells in the snow and a Kobo link to the “box set” of all three.

Happy Friday everyone!

previews

Out Today: Christmas Sarah Morgan!

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Yes, it came out in the US last month, but here in the UK today is the day for the Christmas Sarah Morgan novel – this year’s is called Snowed in for Christmas. This is somewhere between a contemporary romance and a women’s fiction novel – yes I know, I’m not a fan of that as a term, but I don’t think there’s another shorthand that works as well – it has a romance at the heart of it but it’s not just a romance, and it feels like it’s not quite the same as Morgan’s previous romances – although you’re still going to get a happy ending. Or at least I hope you are – I haven’t finished it yet!

books I want

Christmas recommendations wanted!

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A lot of the advance copies I have waiting for me on the kindle now are Christmas books. As ever I’m planning on getting the Christmas reading suggestion post done early this year. And also as ever I suspect it will never happen. But what I do want are your recommendations for your favourite Christmas-set books. Not new ones, the old favourites you return to year on year. Please and thank you!